Getting Started

The title of this blog is 'Digital Photography for Everyone', so I will assume that your only experience of photography is saying cheese when Uncle Fred pointed his camera at you.
Digital Photography is very similar to any other form of photography, you need:

• Something to register an image; film in a traditional camera, a chip in a digital camera;
• A way of controlling the amount of light captured; a shutter;
• A lense to focus the image.

The simplest cameras are lightproof boxes with a simple lens and fixed shutter like this one from Samsung:

They are described as point and click, because that's all you have to do. This one is fine, if you will only be taking holiday snaps, but don't expect to get good pictures in all conditions.
As far as I know all digital cameras have automatic exposure. This means that they will adjust the shutter to allow the right amount of light to hit the sensor to ensure that you end up with an image. It may not be art, but you will see something.
This is an example of what can go wrong:
There are a number of things wrong with this photo, even though my camera has more features than the one above.
It is not the camera's fault, but the photographer's - me.
The faults include:
It's blurred, parts of it are too dark and some are too light, the composition is terrible.
Later I'll dig deeper into the basics, but for now you need to know that buying the camera is not enough. You should also buy at least one memory card, a spare battery and a case.